Disability Media Studies
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Disability Media Studies

Elizabeth Ellcessor, Bill Kirkpatrick

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eBook - ePub

Disability Media Studies

Elizabeth Ellcessor, Bill Kirkpatrick

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About This Book

Introduces key ideas and offers a sense of the new frontiers and questions in the emerging field of disability media studies Disability Media Studies articulates the formation of a new field of study, based in the rich traditions of media, cultural, and disability studies. Necessarily interdisciplinary and diverse, this collection weaves together work from scholars from a variety of disciplinary homes, into a broader conversation about exploring media artifacts in relation to disability. The book provides a comprehensive overview for anyone interested in the study of disability and media today. Case studies include familiar contemporary examples—such as Iron Man 3, Lady Gaga, and Oscar Pistorius—as well as historical media, independent disability media, reality television, and media technologies. The contributors consider disability representation, the role of media in forming cultural assumptions about ability, the construction of disability via media technologies, and how disabled audiences respond to particular media artifacts. The volume concludes with afterwords from two different perspectives on the field—one by disability scholar Rachel Adams, the other by media scholars Mara Mills and Jonathan Sterne—that reflect upon the collection, the ongoing conversations, and the future of disability media studies. Disability Media Studies is a crucial text for those interested in this flourishing field, and will pave the way for a greater understanding of disability media studies and its critical concepts and conversations.

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Publisher
NYU Press
Year
2017
ISBN
9781479867349

Part I

Access and Media Production

1

Kickstarting Community

Disability, Access, and Participation in My Gimpy Life

Elizabeth Ellcessor
“Access” is a crucial concept in both media studies and disability studies, but the word has very different histories in the two fields. Ellcessor puts the range of meanings of access into dialog through the notion of “cultural accessibility,” a term that captures the interrelationships among technological and economic access, access to representation and production, and access to the public sphere. Through her analysis of the Kickstarter-funded web series My Gimpy Life, Ellcessor shows how new technologies and funding models allow new forms of access and participation at multiple levels, blurring distinctions between media production and reception in ways that have particular relevance for the study of disability.
“You probably noticed I use a wheelchair. But I never let my disability define me.”1 With this casual aside, My Gimpy Life (MGL) began its first episode, released on YouTube in the summer of 2012. It was a five-episode web series, created by and starring Teal Sherer, based loosely on her real-life “awkward adventures as a disabled actress trying to navigate Hollywood in a wheelchair.”2 The short series attracted significant attention, winning two 2012 International Academy of Web Television Awards, one for comedy series and one for Sherer’s acting.
In spring 2013, Scherer launched a Kickstarter campaign, attempting to raise $50,000 to produce a second season of MGL.3 Kickstarter.com is a crowdfunding site focused on raising money for creative projects. Ultimately, the MGL campaign raised over $59,000, which was used to produce four additional episodes, released in spring 2014.
The case of MGL brings together a new media form, an emerging funding model, and an intervention in the politics of disability representation and access. Media access and participation have long been part of “the debates on, and practices of, alternative and community media” as well as popular media,4 particularly as these concepts relate to democracy and civic engagement. This chapter considers how the incorporation of disability into emerging types and institutions of popular media is not only important in terms of representation, but also in terms of how it directs our attention to media technologies, access, and complex relations between media producers and audiences. MGL demonstrates that new models of production and new opportunities for interaction with media may support cultural and civic engagement with society through media texts. Such processes also demonstrate the value of cultural accessibility, or the ability to access usable, culturally relevant, collaborative, and inclusive media. Cultural accessibility supports the formation of new forms of disability identity and can be used to further develop civic identities and act within the public sphere.
To organize this chapter, I borrow Nico Carpentier’s triad of media participation: media production, interaction with media content, and participation in society through media.5 The first entails access to and activity within organizations involved in producing media content. The second is explicitly about audiences’ abilities to interact with media content through various forms of feedback. The third refers to ways in which producers and audiences may use media to intervene in society, inform themselves, or otherwise serve participatory (and even democratic) aims.
Throughout, I conceive of viewers and funders of MGL neither as a passive audience nor as necessarily active individual participants. Instead, it is productive to think about the formation of a community centered around MGL, comprised of overlapping social groups, forms of interaction, interests, shared goals, or common ideologies. In this way, the media text becomes a kind of hub for the formation of an “affinity space.” Importantly, this may also be understood as a kind of celebrity-based affinity space, as Sherer comes to represent the full creative team and is the embodied ambassador of the program through her roles as creator, star, and marketer.6 Those who are included within the MGL community may form connections primarily to her, or the project, and secondarily with one another. These connections form the basis upon which interaction with MGL may be transformed to participation in the media, interaction with a media text and community, and participation in society through a media text that is invested in transforming ideologies of disability.

Disability, Media Access, and Independent Television

Before analyzing media production, interaction, and participation in society through media, I will briefly introduce the issues surrounding disability and media access, while also providing a quick overview of web series, or “independent television.” The features of independent television may be particularly conducive to promoting various forms of media access for people with disabilities, and MGL is one of the few disability-themed web series to rise to popular attention.
There has been a recent rise in disability representation on mainstream U.S. television. Reality programs and documentaries are scattered across cable channels, network television includes characters with physical and psychological disabilities, and cable dramas have incorporated characters with conditions ranging from dwarfism to cerebral palsy, d/Deafness to obsessive-compulsive disorder.7 This increase in visibility may be cause for celebration: the more media images available, the more likely that they will move beyond stereotype, connect with audiences, and present nuanced portraits of the lives of people with disabilities. As Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues, “[T]he way we imagine disability through images and narratives determines the shape of the material world, the distribution of resources, our relationships with one another, and our sense of ourselves.”8
Such celebration, however, may be premature. One of the major criticisms of current disability representation on television has centered on the casting of able-bodied actors in disabled roles. This, along with the dearth of writers, directors, and other production personnel with disabilities, may result in representations that draw more upon stereotypes or assumptions about disabilities than they do upon lived experiences. Furthermore, many representations of disability are located in supporting characters and are formally structured so as to marginalize and isolate these characters from their (normative) social surroundings.9 This focalization constructs a culturally dominant able point of view through which disability is understood as defect, deficit, or tragedy.10 Focalization extends to the presumed audience for these programs, which is not typically assumed to include viewers with disabilities. Finally, rarely is any sort of disability community seen; characters struggle with their impairments, societal barriers, and cultural derision in relative isolation, seemingly without support, and sometimes entirely in secret. This reinforces their positioning as a foil or lesson for able-bodied characters, not as the heroes of their own stories.
Thus, it seems that mainstream media representation is not sufficient for incorporating disability into popular culture. Access to images of disability is undeniably important as it allows people with disabilities to form identifications and take up identities within mediated democracies, while exposing able-bodied audiences to different forms of embodied identity. However, when considering access to media—and its cultural and political benefits—it is crucial to move beyond representation to consider accessibility as well as access to production.
Accessibility refers to the means by which people with disabilities can use media, often entailing specialized features or assistive devices. Well-known examples of accessible media include closed-captioned television, enlarged or simplified remote controls, or Braille books and newspapers. Less well-known features include captions on online video, screenreaders that translate the content of a computer screen to audio, and code that enables computer and internet services to be controlled by input devices other than a mouse or keyboard. In the absence of accessibility, access to media content and representations is dramatically constrained. Though often described technologically, accessibility may also be cultural, referring to the active inclusion of culturally relevant disabled perspectives. Cultural accessibility entails reimagining disability and the norms of media production and representation; coalitional, collaborative, and participatory forms of production, reception, and interaction are key to creating culturally accessible media.
Access to production has long been considered important in creating media equity for minority populations. Public television, public access channels, and independent film and video projects have long attempted to encourage access to production for otherwise excluded groups, including women, racial minorities, and members of cultural, religious, or ethnic communities. In order to produce media content, one must have access to appropriate technologies, access to skills development, and often access to funding that can support production. Beyond the simple creation of media texts, access to production should also be inclusive of access to modes of promotion, distribution, and exhibition. That is to say, people must be able to share the media they produce. Historically, this has been difficult, given the high barriers to entry to commercial media industries. For people with disabilities, a lack of accessible tools, discrimination, and passive neglect are possible causes for a pervasive underrepresentation in all capacities related to media production. Recent surveys from the production guilds in Hollywood demonstrate a continued dominance of white men in the industries and do not even include disability as a measured category.11
In contrast, online media has offered new opportunities for the creation of media outside of traditional institutions and without historical barriers to financing, production tools, or distribution. For people with disabilities, this has meant increased access to a range of media texts, tools, and communities. Blogs, Twitter, and other social networking sites provide a necessary antidote to stereotypical media representations of disability by allowing individuals with disability to have a public voice with which to “tell the world about their own stories and life experiences.”12 Online media have also increased access to public spaces for people with disabilities, enabling greater participation in all components of everyday life, from shopping to voting.13 According to Stephen Kuusisto, those who produce web media “will inevitably agree and disagree about the traditional issues that are discussed in the town square but they will also bring to their discussion a further awareness and commitment to disability advocacy. When we consider the long history of social isolation that has surrounded the experience of disability we can sense the remarkable opportunity that is at hand.”14
Simultaneously, the possibility of media creation outside of traditional industrial structures has allowed for the rise of what have variously been termed web series, webisodes, web media, or independent television programs. What they typically share is an episodic structure, short episodes, a multimedia televisual aesthetic legacy, and distribution via videosharing sites such as YouTube or dedicated websites. Furthermore, they are often venues for independent producers and creative p...

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